Meet The Fifth Wave Of The Web

Looking back at the history of the web, we can locate four massive inflection points: search, mobile, apps and social.

Each of these brought about incredible shifts in the way people access information and live their digital lives.

Get ready to add a fifth to that list: cards.

The idea of a digital “card” is simple – a rectangular content container that is skimmable, informative, interactive and best of all, interchangeable.

Cards are more than just another web design trend.

Card UI is not just a new technological innovation. It is the building block for a new web.

There are two distinct advantages cards allow for right away.

A modular back-end
With each section contained inside an individual atomic unit, there is ease of use in restructuring information. Need an update? New card. Need to move things around? Shuffle the deck.

More engagement
Right now, many common examples of cards are just "clickouts" – that is, they're a glorified link, sending you to what could be a completely new destination. In the future, cards will be increasingly interactive, like Google's weather widget or Twitter's Acura configurer.

The most iconic technology company in America gets it. One of the hottest new media companies gets it.

WIRED, one of the most innovative tech media sites, just redesigned with a cards-based interface.

Card-based designs create a new workflow for individuals who are pressed for time and want answers quick – basically every single one of us.

It used to be that when we Googled, we were lucky to get a few relevant websites to scan for our answer. Now, Google is bringing that answer to its search results page for us – usually parsed from whatever site tops the results page.

This shift signals a major change in how we search, how we optimize for search, and how we communicate and how we design.